LETTERS

Action alert!

On September 10th and 11th, ABC is planning to air a “docu-drama” called “Path to 9/11,” which is being billed as “an objective telling of the events of 9/11.” In fact, the film was written by an unabashed conservative who twists the facts to blame President Clinton.

Tell ABC to cancel this inaccurate and slanted Sept. 11th program.

ABC’s new six-hour film was apparently screened in advance only to conservative bloggers and journalists — and received extensive praise from none other than Rush Limbaugh. The film is apparently also riddled with factual errors and distortions; former counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke has completely refuted one of the key scenes in the show.

It’s simply stunning to think that as this fall’s election approaches, a major television network would devote six hours of prime-time programming to air such a slanted and inaccurate program.

Tell ABC (818-460-7477 or abc.go.com) this type of inaccurate and slanted program does not belong on prime-time television, and they should cancel this show.

Will Easton
ActForChange.com

Did the right thing

Recently federal Judge Anna Diggs Taylor did the right thing and declared that the NSA’s warrantless wiretapping program was unconstitutional. She was able to see through the jingoism, propaganda and fear-mongering to support free speech and some rights to privacy. The war-president has gained too much power since 9/11. If the Congress won’t limit his “Orwellian” powers, then the judiciary must.

Chuck Mann
Greensboro NC

Globalization and class struggle

Congratulations to Scott Marshall on a well-reasoned article. (“Class struggle is a fact, not a theory,” PWW 9/2-8) What a misfortune that some otherwise effective labor leaders try to find a “respectable” means to gain their goals, a sort of Horatio Alger Internationale! What a pity it doesn’t ever work!

Globalization is the latest effort of the monopolists to organize the world into One Big Corporation — a kind of reverse side of the old IWW slogan of One Big Union! The IWW agitators were known as “Wobblies,” but if you want to see something wobble, just keep an eye on the imperialists when they try to take on the International Working Class they are creating!

After all, it was none other than Marx who said, “Workers of the world, unite!”— not “Workers of one company, take a dime to overlook your brothers and sisters!”

Warren Greer
Via e-mail

South Asian theater at Rutgers

We are currently working on a theatre production called “Yoni Ki Baat.” Originated by South Asian Sisters on the West Coast, the show will be the second of its kind, in the midst of one of the largest concentrations of people in the country who trace their origins to South Asia. “Yoni Ki Baat” is a theatrical performance that strives to create a safe space for often marginalized South Asian experiences of identity, along different lines of class, race, gender, nationality, religion, sexuality, immigration and Diaspora. The pieces will challenge stereotypes and reconstruct the figure of a South Asian woman. The result is an eclectic confrontation of issues from identity, to labor rights, to sexual violence, all critically engaged in the question of what liberation means for people of South Asian descent. (South Asian descent includes everyone from the Caribbean who traces their roots to South Asia and those who take part in the South Asian Diaspora.) For more information, e-mail ykb_rutgers@yahoo.com.

Sarangi Iyengar
New Brunswick NJ
Sarangi Iyengar is the president of the South Asian Women’s Collective of Rutgers University.

Allen’s racism

Good article by Emile Schepers, “Senator Allen’s monkeyshines” (PWW Online eXtra, www.pww.org/article/articleview/9720/1/266/). As an Indian American I suggest that your article be directed at those Indian Americans who planned to vote for George Allen despite his anti-immigrant and anti-African-American stance. With people like that we do not need white racists and xenophobes. They can wave the Confederate flag and do the job for Allen.

Reddy Chell G.
Via e-mail

Fathers and Sanchez

Roberto Botello’s article, “Poet Sanchez to be missed” (PWW 8/19-25), brought fond memories for his legion of fans, friends and family.

His fans knew him for his social activism and moving poetry. Friends knew him for his soulful humanity. And then there is Trinidad Sanchez’s altruism for family. Many did not know of his empathy for fathers who are shut out of their children’s lives. I was surprised one time to find his comments in a New England Fatherhood Coalition discussion group.

From his days in Denver, he wrote “Eulogy for a Deadbeat Dad,” a portion which reads, “We will celebrate you and the fathers we carry in our souls / the men living, struggling daily to be good fathers and men.” Let us never forget the legacy of our friend, our activist, our teacher, our poet — Trinidad Sanchez.

Don Mathis
Sherman TX